Do You Trust Me?
by Kulkum
Summary: What if Jane Shepard and Garrus Vakarian had never met at all? What if rather than going off to Omega half cocked, Garrus re-applied to become a Spectre? What if the Council sent Spectre Vakarian to make sure Shepard didn't cause trouble? What if he liked the way her waist looked in that armor? AU fun.
1. Shotguns and Grenades

They called it a base, and a training ground. The Spectre in grey and blue armor called it a blasted Hell hole that reminded him a bit of the Krogan home world. The comparison made a sick sort of sense, because after Doctor Okeer had taken residence and convinced the Blue Suns to fun his research, the landscape had basically become a training ground for Krogan. Rumors and whispers had hinted at the Krogan being cloned, an idea that made the Turians stomach knot. The last thing the galaxy needed as another uprising of that bloodthirsty mercenary race.

That was exactly why he was here, in a manner of speaking. Shepard was here. The bug he had managed to convince the Salarian Doctor to carry onto her ship was working like a charm, and he had managed to arrive before the former Spectre and her lackluster crew of Cerberus mutineers, a single brilliant but very dangerous Salarian doctor, and a well-known murderer that he simply knew as Subject Zero.

He knew her entire story; at least the story that the Council had provided him when they gave him this assignment. Jane Shepard, former Council Spectre, believed to be dead after an attack from an unknown Geth aggressor, was somehow brought 'back to life' by the Human Supremacist organization known as Cerberus. After swiftly breaking ties with Cerberus, Shepard had gone to the Citadel Council to ask for aid in hunting down what she called a direct link to the Reapers, the Collectors. When the Council offered to reinstate her Spectre status as a token of support, Shepard had said 'Go fuck yourselves.' In those exact words. Then she had run off, with a ship she had stolen from Cerberus, with no support save for a few loyal followers, no real plan, and no hope of success.

There were parts of the story he could see as possible truths, and there were parts of the story that he believed were varren shit. Back from the dead? Reapers? Collectors? As he ran the whole thing through his mind for the tenth time, he almost snorted in derision from his perch in a tall building a few thousand meters from Okeer's lab. As he waited, and watched through the modified scope of his rifle, he went over what he had learned about the human in his time following her.

What he had noticed most about her was her extreme capability in combat and tactical adaptability as a leader. It should not have surprised him; she had stopped the Geth attack on the Citadel, and killed Saren, one of the most respected Spectres of their age. But from what he had seen on Omega when she had come looking for Doctor Solus and Archangel, she had almost no trouble suppressing or outright defeating anyone who stood in her way. It was particularly impressive, because she had been alone until she had reached the good doctor.

After managing to convince the doctor to join her (something which the Spectre had correctly predicted, hence the bug) she had gone on a short but thorough search for the vigilante that the locals had nicknamed Archangel. A silly name, really. Who wanted to be called Archangel? Even though her efforts to find him were unsuccessful, she had managed to find every hideout where Archangel had ever taken refuge, and even managed to help a few random people along the way. This bit surprised him, especially the Quarian mechanic she had gotten out of his debt and sent back to the Flotilla. There had been no been no benefit for her or her squad, and she had not request or required him to join her to work on a ship that was already under-manned. She had done it out of kindness, or a sense of justice.

The Spectre respected her for that. They might have gotten along well, if it wasn't so clear that she was insane.

And there she was, making her way toward Okeer's lab with her team of two. He remembered from his research that a team of two was standard Alliance military regulation for a recon team, but Shepard was known for taking a team of two with her no matter what the mission was. Odd. His scope settled on the one he knew to be Shepard. As always, she wore full armor bearing the marking of the elite N7 unit, but she had changed the design since Omega. Where it had been white and yellow before, now it was almost solid black trimmed with a crimson shade of red. A good change, no doubt made to confirm that her ties with Cerberus were severed. From the lack of thickness to the shoulders, the narrow plates on the chest piece, and the more heavily armored appearance of the legs, he decided that the armor was a custom job. The armor looked to be… Hm… Surprisingly effective for someone with her combat style. And with her narrow waist, the armor plated at the hips gave her an almost Turian appearance at a distance. Until the swells in the chest plate designed to make room for her breasts were added to the picture.

And why was he considering how she looked in the armor? He knew full well what humans looked like under the armor, and like the Asari it held no appeal to him. So… Soft and fleshy.

Focus returned, and he tracked the squad of three through the proving grounds. He watched her interact with a newly 'born' Krogan soldier, and to his complete surprise even managed to gain his help in clearing a path forward before leaving him to his eventual, inevitable death. Interesting.

From there, he lost sight of her for a time. He had chosen this vantage point because it allowed him to cover most of the field from a great distance, but it did have a blind spot. Once Shepard reached it, the Spectre folded the barrel of his Widow and stowed it on his back. He should have no trouble reaching the next vantage point before her team. He had already cleared his own path.

He had not miscalculated his own rate of travel, but he had underestimated hers. Apparently, this biotic named Subject Zero was an impressive addition to Shepard's team, and the Blue Suns had hardly delayed them at all. By the time he had reached Okeer's lab he found it in ruins, with Okeer himself lying motionless near what had once been a tank for breeding Krogan. Now, there was just an obvious clean imprint on the grimy floor, telling the Spectre that she had taken something with her. When he checked the room adjacent, found a squad of tank bred Krogan lying dead on the floor among the scattered parts of heavy mechs. These were all around what remained of the leader of the Blue Suns on this planet. From the torn and bloody state of her body, it was obvious that she had been torn apart by a biotic detonation.

This clarified things. Shepard and Subject Zero seemed to have found a kinship in battle, something that he had not expected to happen so soon after the prisoner had been acquired.

"Damn," he cursed softly, sweeping the view finder of his visor over each corpse to ensure that they were actually corpses. He would have to search the room, look for whatever data she might have found before he tapped into the bug again to find the location of the Normandy. It was time that he stopped underestimating Shepard. He would not make the same mistake again. Turning from the carnage, he made his way into the lab again to start searching the data…

And found that he had underestimated her again. A lesson that he learned staring down the barrel of a shotgun, and beyond that into the face of a red haired human woman with emerald green eyes and look of annoyed suspicion on her face. He figured it was a credit to the Spectres that his first response was simply to stand up straighter, and go very still under that watchful gaze of the ex-Spectre.

"I don't know who you are," she began as she took half a step closer to him so she could press the wide barrel of the gun right up against the faceplate of his helmet with a light tap of poly fiber on metal, "but I have had a _very_ shitty week and I am not in the mood for games. Why are you following me? You get once chance for your answer not to be a lie."

He took in the sight of her as she spoke. Her skin was almost milky white, and peppered with what humans and Asari referred to as freckles. Running along her cheeks were mostly healed scars, with the faintest glow of cybernetics marring the freshly knitted flesh. There was a hard set to her mouth, and the sharp green of her eyes was ice hard as she waited for his reply. He decided to give it.

"Vakarian, Council Spectre."

He had hoped that the simple, honest answer would calm the situation. However, her eyes went from ice to fire in a flash before she folded down her shotgun and stowed it on her back. He almost had time to breath a quiet sigh of relief before her armored fist slammed into his equally armored head. The force of the blow rattled him, and he had a moment to think _She's a lot stronger than she looks,_ before she slammed into him with a full body tackle that sent them both flying over one of the subject beds in the lab.

Grunting as he landed on the bottom, he didn't even have time to voice more than a growl of annoyance before she was straddling him, slamming her fist into his helmet again with enough force the crack the face plate. Finally recovering from the sudden attack enough to react, he bolted upright when she raised her fist again, catching her behind the elbow and forcing his weight forward to throw her off. She rolled with it, but came up short when he rolled onto one foot and lasted out with the other, catching her square in the chest with enough force to keep make her graceful roll a sloppy tumble into a series of shelves.

"Damn it, Commander," he growled as he drew himself to his feet. "I am not your enemy!"

The words seemed to fall on deaf ears as she quickly sprang to her feet and charged at him again. Dropping into a fighting stance, he expected to easily be able to deflect her wild charge when she reached him. However, she only took two steps before dropping into a quick slide that ended with her driving her boot into the joint of his knee. The armor took most of the impact, but pain still flared and he was forced to one knee just as she came up hard with an uppercut that drove him back onto his ass. _Spirits, no wonder she became a Spectre. She is amazing. And she's starting to piss me off!_

He feinted a bit, taking longer than he needed to to get to his feet. As expected, she took advantage of the open by rushing towards him and striking out towards his gut with one leg. Catching it, he wrenched it to the side sharply in such a way that it forced her to spin around to face away from him or risk a broken knee. Once she did, he rose up and jammed his shoulder into her lower back to send her stumbling forward more than a few steps. Then with a scream of rage, her biotics flared in a bright blue nimbus around her.

 _Fuck, Shepard._

He realized that up to this point, it was the fact that he had found respect in her apparent desire to do justice that had prevented him from escalating the confrontation into something more deadly. He had already had ample opportunity to draw his side arms and finish her while her barriers were down. But as she turned to face him with the faint scent of ozone filling the air and her submachine gun in her hand, he knew that the time for playing nice was gone.

Hands flicking to his sides, he activated his shields and sprinted for cover of the door before the hail of submachine gun fire tore into the wall beside it. Drawing the two black pistols from his hips, he braced himself back against the wall and called out, "I don't suppose it would help if I told you again that I am _not your fucking enemy!"_

"Bullshit!" was her reply, and he heard the tell-tale sound of her shotgun unfolding again. "I was a Spectre, remember? If you're here looking for me, you're either trying to fuck me over or you're trying to kill me! So which is it, Vakarian?"

"I'm just supposed to find out what you're doing in the…" He stopped when he heard the low hum of biotics, and felt a tingle of the air against his plates even through the armor. _Shit, she's a Vanguard,_ he remembered just in time to roll away from the door before her sudden appearance blasted the area around the door with a pressure wave. Luckily, he wasn't there when she swung her shotgun around to where he _had_ been and blasted a hole in the wall almost as large as his head. Training his sights on her as he continued to dash across the same room where she and her team had just dismantled heavy mechs, killed four Krogan, and ended the reign of a merc company leader, he fired a few shots to test the strength of her barriers. When the ripple of energy outward from the impacts seemed to have no major effect on their strength, he knew he would need something a little more… Robust.

Crouched low behind a tank, he unclipped a grenade from his belt; he still used the old disk models that had gone out of style a few years before. Something about the happy hum they made in flight caused his opponents to panic and break cover too soon, or to run for cover a little too late. He thumbed the timer to a three second delay before he came out of cover and flipped the disk in her direction. He came out of cover long enough to squeeze a few shots into her barriers again, and give her a target. The moment he heard odd hum of her biotics building for a charge, he flipped the grenade in her direction. She saw it coming. She might even have been able to avoid it, except he squeezed off another round and caught the disk mid-flight. The resulting blast of electrical discharge ripped through her barrier, and drove her back into the wall with a cry of pain that was just feminine enough to make him consider how out of place it sounded coming from the woman who had just tried pretty hard to kill him.

He didn't give her time to recover, or to focus on getting her barriers back up before he gave her one final chance to understand that he was not there to fight her. Swinging his pistols around, he fired them both, one right after the other. Shepard winced, as if expecting that to be end. He was a little stunned to notice that she hadn't actually tried to avoid, or even curl into herself protectively. Those would have been normal reactions of someone who actually wanted to survive. He watched silently as she glanced at one shoulder, and then the other. It was obvious that she understood the message, and the reason he had only scratched the armor of each shoulder in a near perfect mirror image. Both shots could easily have been fatal.

With a slow sigh, she slid down the wall slowly until she was sitting, the shotgun sliding from limp fingers as she lowered her head onto her knees. "Fine, Vakarian. You're not here to kill me, I get it. But what's the point?" She raised green eyes that were now dull, and the look on her face was… Sadness. Defeat. Even despair. "The Council doesn't want to see the truth, my own military doesn't want to see the truth for fear of upsetting the Council. Neither one of them will look at the evidence. The only people in the galaxy who believe me are the same people whose ship I stole, and I want to be in bed with them as much as I want to kiss a rabid varren. So now I am stuck on a ship where my only back up comes from a biotic psychopath, a Salarian doctor who sings show tunes, a scant few crewmen who decided they would rather work for me than Cerberus, and my only two saving graces; which are my pilot and my doctor. So you tell me, Spectre. When no one in the galaxy wants to trust me, how am I supposed to trust anyone?"

He knew that something wasn't right. He was no expert on humans, or on insanity, but he wasn't even getting a minor twitch to tell him that she might have been mad. He had expected there to be _something._ Some manic need to spread the word of the Reapers, some pitch about the Collectors, a few words about conspiracy or the universe being out to get her. She should have been trying to convince him right now where he stood. Instead she just looked up at him with questioning eyes that held a terrible sadness, as if he would have the answers.

She looked infinitely alone.

Holstering the twin guns at his hips, he walked towards her cautiously. She had caught him by surprise more than once, and he did not relish the idea of it happening again. But he would show her a little trust, and he reached up to unfastened the seals on his helmet. He was aware that her eyes were following his every move as he pulled the helmet off, placing it beside him as he crouched down in front of her. Her eyes moved over his face slowly, and there seemed to be a curious almost recognition in them. Her lips pulled down in a frown of concentration, as if she were trying to remember something important. He wasn't sure what it was, but sitting here in silence was getting them nowhere.

"Do you have evidence?"

Her concentration broke when her eyes snapped up to his, incredulous and wary. "What difference does that make? The Council has already seen the evidence, and they ignored most of the facts so they could blame the Geth."

He gave a small grunt of dismissal, flanged voice mildly irritated when he spoke again. "The difference is that I have only seen what the Council keeps in the archives, which clearly states that the Geth were behind the attack on the Citadel. The Council it not always right. If you believe you have evidence that says otherwise, I will reserve judgment until I've seen it for myself. That is," he said as he drew himself to his feet easily, "if you were serious about finding someone to trust you."

Patience. It was one benefit of his training as a sniper, and he held onto it now as the human woman held his gaze and seemed to be searching his face for what he didn't know. But it was almost a full minute before she nodded, bracing her feet against the ground and dragging herself to her feet. "All right, Vakarian. I'll let you see what I have." He relaxed just a bit, though he kept his posture straight and his face impassive as he gave her a curt nod in reply. Once she had retrieved her shotgun, she turned her back on him for a moment to place her head on the side of her helmet. "Joker, I'm ready to extract. And I'm bringing a guest from the Council."

Though he noticed the bite of her last words, he chose to ignore it. He choose instead to take a good look at her at close range for the first time. The armor could account for a certain amount of her build, but he somehow doubted it accounted for much of it. With her back turned, he was able to see the curve of her armored waist, and… Damn it, why was he looking at her waist again? Directing his eyes at her back instead, he listened to the (very snarky) reply from who was doubtless her pilot before she closed the connection and waved him forward. "You have a ship, I take it. If it's small enough, we should be able to squeeze it into the Normandy's docking bay for now."

Nodding and trying his damnedest not to watch the way her hips moved when she walked away from him, the Spectre followed.

* * *

He was surprised when rather than being escorted to ops for the de-briefing, she instead took her directly to her cabin. A very large cabin that was in a near total state of disarray. Clothing was scattered all over the place, there were numerous data pads laying unsorted on the desk, the bed was unmade, and the general feeling of messy couldn't be avoided. It didn't bother him. He was aware of the fact that she was lacking crew, and that clearly included the crewmen that would have been responsible for keeping the captain's cabin orderly while she handled the more important duties of command.

Watching with some amusement as she scrambled to the bed and scooped up some very small, very interesting looking articles of clothing before shoving them into a drawer, he assumed that they were her underwear. Pink underwear, which had him pulling his mandibles tight against his jaw to keep them from twitching in amusement. "This is an impressive ship, Commander. Though why they would have the command cabin under such a vulnerable section of hull, I'm not sure I understand."

Her gaze followed his to the skylight that offered a view of the planet below, and she shrugged easily. "They managed to bring me back once after being spaced and dropped through a planet's atmosphere," she said, and he clearly heard the anger in her voice when she spoke of the organization. "Knowing Cerberus, they have a backup copy of me somewhere anyway. So hey, if I die again I'm sure they'll find some way to manage."

He still was not fully convinced that she had been brought back from the dead, in part because he didn't want to think of the implications of a race that had found a way to simply resurrect dead tissue with impunity. But he let the subject slide with a noncommittal noise as she turned to face him. Out of her armor now, she wore a simple brown outfit that exposed a surprising amount of shoulder, left her arms fully bare, a left him with no doubt that her armor was not the reason her waist appeared so… Admirable.

 _Been out in space alone too long, Varkaian,_ he thought as he lifted his gaze to hers. Walking towards him, she stepped past to the desk and started to shuffle through and sort the pads there. She didn't seem to be aware that he had been looking places a Turian really shouldn't go, and he was grateful for that. "There is a lot of data," she said, tossing some pads aside that clearly showed ship status reports, dossiers for possible crew including one that she lingered on with a light frown. Moving to stand beside her, he could see the name Archangel as the subject. Clearly, she was still disappointed that she had never found the vigilante because she tossed the pad aside with an annoyed tsk. His mandibles twitched once.

"Here," she said finally, backing away from the desk and leaving him with a neat stack of about fifteen data pads. "Starting with Eden Prime, this is most of what I know about the Reapers, the Collectors, and the Protheans. A lot of the data on the Collectors came from Cerberus, but I've managed to gather some intel of my own along the way. Have at it."

His brow plates quirked a bit at the commanding tone she seemed to use so easily, and the odd phrasing that obviously meant she was giving him permission to look over the data. He gave a short nod, and turning to settle into the offered chair, he picked up the first pad.

* * *

Jane Shepard slipped out of her cabin shortly after the Spectre picked up the first pad and started to read. Relief was quick, when she saw that he was giving it his complete focus and was not doing this simply to humor the lunatic. Riding the lift down, her brow furrowed as she considered what to make of him. There was something that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Something about him that was familiar. Even the name. She could have sworn she had heard that name somewhere before, but she couldn't place where. She had tried to dismiss it, thinking that maybe she had heard it because he was a Spectre, but it kept coming back to nag her. It was really starting to get on her nerves. The fact that he seemed willing to at least listen and at least look over the data made her annoyance unimportant, and gave rise to a little bit of hope.

She didn't believe for a moment that, even if he did believe her, it would change anything with the Council. Some part of her that pride couldn't touch regretted the fact that she had told the Council to take their Spectre status and shove it. Her anger had gotten the better of her, and now things were much more complicated than they needed to be. She had forgotten how many doors being a Spectre had opened for her in the past. If this Garrus Vakarian believed her, maybe he would join her. Then he could throw around his weight as a Spectre, and she could start getting things done!

But she was getting way ahead of herself. Even if he did believe her, that was no promise that he could follow her without risking his own Spectre status. The uncertainty of the last few weeks was driving her crazy.

And why did she keep catching him looking at her ass?!

She dismissed it as imagination for the third time, and when the elevator stopped on the crew level, she made her way into the mess. She saw Mordin there, humming to himself in that amazingly musical voice of his as he looked over what she could only assume were test results. The damned Salarian was _always_ running tests. She gave him a quick greeting before she went to the drink station, and after a minute of digging through the supplies, found a packet of dextro coffee. Or whatever they called it. She was sure it wasn't called coffee, but it was what Tali had always seemed eager for in the morning. Starting the mixture to heating, she leaned against the counter and tapped her foot as she waited.

 _Damn it._

"Hey doc," she called without moving from her spot. "Can I ask a question?"

"Of course, Shepard. Happy to help any way I can." To his credit, the Salarian almost instantly set the pad aside and stood to face her. She knew that his sudden shift in attention was more to be polite than any form of military response. He was on the Normandy of his own free will.

"What do you know about Turians?"

He didn't seem surprised by her question. In fact, the look on his face was something along the lines of 'Ah ha, I was wondering when you would ask.' "Turian. Fascinating species. Predatory, militaristic, aggressive by nature. Natural aggression tempered by social code of honor and personal responsibility. All for the greater good of the race as a whole. A fine example of social evolution overcoming psychological and physiological instinct. Not like Krogan…"

"Ok, ok. That's not really what I meant," she said, reaching up to rub the back of her neck uneasily for a moment. She realized that he was watching her intently. Very intently. Waiting for her to continue, obviously. "This Spectre I brought on board. He's a Turian, and I keep catching him…" She struggled for a polite way to say it, and gave up with a frustrated wave of her hand to her lower body. "I've caught him staring at my ass. I'm not sure if that means anything, because Turians don't actually, you know, have asses."

"Ah," said Mordin, and the pause made her blink. He almost never stopped talking, but from the back and forth tick of his eyes, she realized that he was thinking. "Not likely. Muscular posterior not of sexual interest to Turians." She groaned at the term sexual, but felt some relief at the fact that she had clearly misunderstood… "Waist however. Very erotic. Almost free of plates, exposed skin, sensitive to touch. Have noticed a tendency for Turian males to observe the female's waist first before making desire for coitus known. Maybe just curiosity, but not likely. Rude to stare without interest. Code of honor."

Shepard had lowered her face into her hands as soon as he said 'waist.' _Oh god, he has been looking at my waist. That's why he kept looking even after I turned around on the planet. What the hell am I supposed to do with_ that? Then she realized that Mordin was still talking.

"…Could forward advice booklet to your quarters. Valuable diagrams, positions comfortable for both species, erogenous zone overviews."

Feeling a hot blush rush up her neck, Shepard quickly turned to retrieve the mug with one hand while wildly waving the other in Mordin's direction. "Forget it, forget it! Thanks anyway, Mordin."

As she made a quick retreat towards the elevator, she heard him call out after her, "Anytime, Shepard. Always happy to help."


	2. Turian Reproductive Physiology

Hardly a glance was given when Shepard walked in, and silently set the mug down in front of him. A small moment of surprised thanks at the dextro beverage was all he could offer, as what he was seeing on the pad before him was unbelievable at best, and terrifying at worst. It was so insane that it could have been easily dismissed; that is, if he had ignored the reports on the ship known as Sovern from the previous pad. Mandibles tight, he continued to read on about her belief that the massive (Geth?) battleship had been a Reaper, her encounter with that Reaper on Vermire, statistics from the Battle of The Citadel showing the ships design comparing Sovern to all known Geth designs and finding that they were _nothing_ alike, the fact that the ship had employed energy weaponry that had cut through Alliance, Turian, and Asari battleships with horrible ease, and the mass effect field that had made it all but invulnerable to direct fire from the entire Citadel fleet.

Of course, that didn't mean that the ship had been _sentient._ An AI of that complexity would require… No, it wasn't worth thinking about until he saw more. Drawing his mandibles tight and keeping his face impassive, he set that pad aside carefully, and picked up the next one on the subject of Reaper indoctrination, followed by one about the possible history of the Reapers.

He had no idea how long he sat there looking over the data. While he had started with an estimate of how long it would take, he quickly surrendered that in favor of taking a blank data pad and started to arrange the data as he might have a C-sec investigation. He started by marking important dates, provable facts, opinions, historical data, and mythology. He separated these by the reliability of the source, a process during which he set Shepard in her own category of 'Unknown reliability.' He linked data that might have been correlated, and to the best of his knowledge put those facts into time lines starting from the first known archeological evidence that hinted at the disappearance of an advanced species. According to Doctor Liara T'soni, it had not been, despite the beliefs of most in the galactic community, the disappearance of the Protheans. Last, he checked the various timelines side by side.

When he was finished, he sat staring at his own data in silence for a long moment. Saren's madness, Matriarch Benezia, the sudden appearance of the Geth, husks, impossibly powerful warships, and a cycle of approximately fifty-thousand years. The Collectors were the odd factor in the data, with no clear connection to the Reapers other than the fact that they seemed to be causing the disappearance of entire human colonies. The energy weapons that they had used to destroy the first Normandy however…

He set the pad down silently, and lowered his head into his gloved hands for a long moment. He was aware that she had not stopped watching him the entire time he had been looking over the data. He could feel her gaze following his every move, and the air almost hummed with the tension that the silence brought. Raising his head, keeping his mandibles well under control and his face impassive, he looked at her.

She stood now, leaning against the tank of water that might have been for fish at some point, but stood empty now. The light from the tank cast a haunting glow about her, making her light skin seem darker, and her hair look almost like it were on fire. But he was taken by her eyes. Or the intensity of them as she watched him without blinking. There was a hunger in that gaze, a hope, and the desperation that he suddenly understood without question.

"Damn it, Shepard," he finally said, his voice just a touch weaker than he would have liked. "I had hoped you weren't insane, but I never believed you would be right."

The slow blink and open mouthed look of disbelief that she gave him made him restless, and suddenly he couldn't stand still. There was too much to do, too much to plan. He stood suddenly and walked to the widest empty space in the room, the one in front of her couch; there he started to pace. No… He stormed in short back and forth lines as his mandibles twitched and quivered in irritation. He just needed to be _moving_ or he was going to start breaking furniture. "How could the Council ignore this?" he growled, his hands clenched tightly at his side. "What are they _thinking?_ I could understand the need for some discretion, to avoid causing a panic, but their complete lack of action is… Is…"

"Moronic?" he heard Shepard supply helpfully, though her voice was oddly soft. "So, you believe me?"

"Of course I believe you," he rumbled, still too annoyed and frankly, deeply frightened to stop pacing. He kept that fear way in the back of his mind though. There was still time, after all. "The evidence is all there. It would take a blind Volus not to see… Mmph!"

His pacing and his annoyed rant were both cut off when he found his forward motion stopped by the fact that he suddenly had a human female attached to his chest. And his _mouth._ Kissing. He had worked in C-sec long enough to know what it looked like when humans kissed. And thankfully, the kiss was brief if not exuberant in execution. But her staying attached to his chest was not over quite so quickly, and even through his armor he could feel her arms tighten their grip on him as she whispered a 'Thank you.'

Uncomfortable to say the least at the sudden invasion of her personal space, he was also not stupid. She was grateful. She had been basically alone, had found herself the victim of a Council cover up, most of the galaxy thought she was insane, and she had known for a long time what he had just now learned. It was amazing that she actually _was_ still sane. But it wasn't helping his focus that their height difference or maybe the thickness of his armor's chest plate made it easier for her to show this gratitude with her arms wrapped around his damned waist. Or the fact that when she squeezed him, he could feel the pressure through his armor in a way that made his blood warm.

"Ahem," he said, and awkwardly reached up with both hands and awkwardly patted her shoulders to give her something other than a stiff Turian. "You're… Welcome. Commander." Some comfort, even if he thought the attempt was pathetic. At least she wasn't crying… He didn't think she was, anyway. He just wanted her to let him go.

He also wanted his fucking hormones to realize that she wasn't a Turian.

 _Think of rampaging Krogans. Think of rampaging Krogans._ She squeezed him again at the pats, and he could feel her fingers digging into his waist, forcing him to swallow his harmonics before the rumble became obvious. Thank the Spirts she didn't know what that actually meant. He glanced down at her, and from his angle he could see down her back. A back the flowed with a perfectly curved cemetery into her waist, her hips, and pants that were quiet snug on her toned backside. _Think of_ naked _rampaging Krogans._

He almost released an audible and obvious sigh of relief when she relaxed her grip, and pulled away from him to look up at him with now bright green eyes. They were damned near radiant with a life they had been lacking until now. He couldn't read her well, but the fact that she was happier was written all over her face. And he desperately hoped she couldn't read him, because befuddled and a little aroused was likely written all over his.

He took a step back, and started to steady himself as he held her gaze. She was… Watching him with the most curious expression again. He had seen it before on the planet. She was trying to remember something, and apparently it had something to do with him. Or his clan markings? Her eyes were all over his face for a moment before her mouth suddenly dropped open, and he found her finger an inch from his face as she wagged it at him in a somewhat wild motions. "You! You're Garrus Vakarian!"

His mandibles twitched, and he blinked as he watched how the finger was jabbed in his direction in an almost accusatory manor. The fact that she spoke as if she had just learned his name. made his brow plates arch slightly as he returned his gaze to hers. Maybe she had lost her mind after all… "Yes..?" He drew out the word a bit, and added a slightly sarcastic inflection to the question in his tone.

" _Officer_ Vakarian," she continued, and to him she looked as though she had just discovered the greatest thing in the galaxy. "You were the one assigned to investigate Saren before I could prove that he had gone rogue. I saw you in the Council chamber years ago but one of my squad tripped over a Keeper, and by the time I turned back you were already gone."

He remembered the case, and the fact that he had failed to actually find anything his superiors had deemed 'solid.' "Yes. I remember hearing that you were on the same trail, but by the time I caught up with you after your meeting with the Council, you had already exposed Saren. I figured there wasn't much else I could do at that point, so…" He paused in his words as he remembered exactly what he had done next. He had gone to apply for Spectre training again, because _she_ had gotten the job done when _he_ couldn't. He realized with a bit of shock that she was basically the reason he had become a Spectre. Why had he never realized that?

She seemed to positively vibrate with pleasure, lips parted in a huge grin. "Well damn, it must be fate then that we would end up on the same trail again. A shame I didn't catch up with you then. I could have used someone with your… Talents." Her grin turned into a smirk as she cocked her waist a bit and set her hand on her hips. He found the sight much too appealing.

Wait… He had to be reading the look on her face and the glimmer in her eyes all wrong. Was she… Flirting? And he was staring again.

 _Damn! I swear, the first thing I am going to do when I get back to the Citadel is find a nice, trim waisted Turian woman and make her damned night,_ he promised himself as he dismissed the idea that she had any intention of actually flirting with him. From her personal history, she had shown no sign of interest in aliens at all.

"A lot of my talents came from the Spectre training," he said, standing up a bit straighter to ensure his professional air. "And I don't believe in fate."

Her smirk didn't falter, though her eyes did darken a bit as her gaze flicked down to glide over his armored chest for a moment. "Then we'll call it luck. So," she continued before he could respond, walking past him to pick up the data pad he had been working on. She grew silent as she looked over it for a long moment. Now he saw the seriousness return, and her face became expressionless and as cool as her voice when she continued. "What are you going to do now?"

Not oblivious to how she had worded that, he considered her for a long moment in silence. She must have been thinking that just because he believed her didn't mean he intended to risk his own Spectre status by running around the Terminus systems looking for aliens that may or may not have been connected to the Reapers. He realized that as much pressure as the revelation about the Reapers had put on him, as much as it knotted his gut and but a buzz of fear in the back of his mind, she had been dealing with it for years. The Council had dismissed her claims, and sent her to fight the Geth instead, which had ended in her death. Or her disappearance at the very least. Dead or not (there was only so much a man could accept in a short time, and his daily limit had been reached) she had been wandering from system to system over the past week looking for help where there was so little to be found. It probably had not helped when she had been unable to locate the vigilante on Omega, either. But he knew that she would keep going anyway. Because there was a threat, and she was the only one who knew enough to fight against it.

Previously, he had wondered about her sanity. Now… Now, as she looked up at him with a calm expression that told him that she expected nothing from him, he decided she was likely the strongest person he would ever know.

"I assume you have more dossiers on possible crew for this little adventure of yours?" he asked, his gaze never wavering from hers. When she gave a cautious nod, her eyes speculative on his face, he continued. "Alright then. I'll contact the Council once we've broken orbit. I'm not making any promises there, but I am sure that I can at least convince them that the Collectors are enough of a threat to warrant getting your Spectre status returned and gain their support." He saw those (damn pretty) green eyes light up, and the beginnings of a smile forming curving the corners of her mouth.

He pressed on, before he could allow himself to contemplate how her smile reaching her eyes made them positively shine. "Then we will head back to Omega. I know where this Archangel character goes when he needs to disappear for a while. After that…" He shrugged slightly, folding his arms over his chest and shifted his weight to one leg with a cock sure smirk to match the cock sure pose. "We'll give the Collectors something to worry about."

Given her reaction to the last time she had expressed her pleasure in his decision, he should have been expecting it. But he really wasn't. Her hand shot up to cowl of his arm and gripping the front with deceptively small hands. When she yanked him forward until he was forced to bend at the waist, he had half a second to think once again that she was stronger than she looked before she destroyed his ability to think. The little smack of her lips on his mouth that she had given him before had been a friendly thank you, obviously. This… Her oh so soft lips sealed to his semi-plated mouth as if there was no difference between them worth noticing; and given that his mouth had dropped open in shock at the unexprected lip lock, she clearly had no problem taking advantage as she tilted her head to change the angle a bit. The next thing he knew, she was sliding her tongue over his lips, over his teeth, and then brushing his bottom lip teasingly until his tongue decided to find out exactly what was going on. Once it did, she made a sound of pleasure that hummed against his plates and caused his own low growl to respond. The sound she made was enough like a pleased Turian female to have his hands shooting to her waist reflexively, still gloved fingers biting into her clothing to pull her body closer to his.

The little yelp she released, and the laugh that followed was almost enough to break the spell. The was, until she her free hand slipped into his cowl, and reached for the only hide on his body not presently protected by armor.

 _Oh no, please don't do th…_ He brain dropped into his crotch and all thought was scattered when her fingers slipped over the exposed flesh under his fringe. The growl she tore from his throat made the tiny female against him shiver, and only seemed to encourage her as she ran her blunt teeth over his chin while she spoke in a husky whisper. "Oh damn, growl some more. That is ridiculously hot."

 _Fuck it,_ he decided with a thought that was only half intelligent. The codpiece of his armor was becoming tighter by the second, and any thought of stopping was gone when she leaned closer and ran her tongue over his throat. He did growl again, and not just because she wanted it. Her scent had changed, sweetened in a way that was impossible to misinterpret, and not even rampaging Krogan ased his sudden desire to strip out of his armor. "Damn it, Shepard…"

"Commander, I know you're trying to recruit 'Mr. Mysterious' up there," the voice of her pilot suddenly cut through the haze of lust that had been growing between them, making them both jerk slightly. "But EDI tells me there are Blue Sun shuttles launching from the planet. And while I'm not worried overmuch, I would really rather not scratch the paint."

Garrus wasn't quiet able to restrain the annoyed growl that escaped him, though he did clip it short and regain some control of himself when he turned his eyes down to a flushed and lightly panting Shepard. Apparently, the pilot (Joker?) had heard the growl and just couldn't keep his mouth shut. "Ah… Commander, am I interrupting something?"

The red haired human was looked up at him with a dangerous glint of lust in her eyes, licking her lips slowly as she disengaged from him fully. She clearly had not wanted to stop. She didn't look in the least bit relieved, the least bit pleased by the distraction. The idea of that intrigued him, and he decided then, staring into burning green eyes, that they would continue this at some point very soon. She seemed to agree with his silent assessment when she spoke to Joker. "Nothing that we won't finish later, Joker."

A little chuckle, only the slightest bit breathless, escaped him and she grinned.

"Ooookay," drawled Joker, followed by a beat of silence before he muttered under his breath, "I could have done without that mental image for… Forever."

"What was that, Mr. Moreau?"

"Orders, ma'am?" he replied as if nothing had been said. It made Garrus smirk slightly. Shepard and her smart assed pilot clearly had a friendship beyond their professional engagement. On a Turian cruiser, he might have been tossed out an airlock.

Jane rolled her eyes just a little, but a smile remained as she turned her gaze up to him again. "Set a course for Omega. I have some new information, and we're going back for Archangel."

"Aye aye, Commander," he replied, and Garrus was impressed that no more than two seconds later the stars could be seen rolling in the skylight above her room as the ship changed course. Smart-ass comments aside, Joker was quick and efficient when given an order.

He found it surprising that there was a complete lack of… Awkwardness when he turned his eyes back to Shepard. She kept a tiny smirk on her face as she walked around him to reach the desk, her shoulder bumping his when she did so. He responded with a resounding rumble in his chest that he made sure was loud enough for her to hear. Watching the way a light shiver of delight raced through her made his mandibles flutter slightly. But the moment had passed beyond whatever it had been for the moment. Not that the painful throb against his armor had vanished, but there was too much to be done before they reached Omega.

"I'll speak to the Council once we've found Archangel," he said lowly, rolling his shoulders a bit to ease a tension in his plates that sudden, intense arousal had caused. "There are some things I need from my ship, so…"Green eyes turned to rest on him as he placed his hand at the small of her back for just a moment before he turned to make his way towards the elevator.

He knew her eyes were following him, so the pause at the door came easily when she spoke again. "You realize that I wasn't kidding. We _are_ going to finish what we started," she said, turning to lean against the edge of her desk with her arms crossed over her chest. When he turned to her, he found that she wasn't smiling. She was looking at him like a soldier might look at a home cooked meal after eating military rations for six months.

 _So much for getting any work done. Still…_

"What _you_ started Shepard," he said, adding just a hint of smug as he backed his way through the door.

There was an amused glint in her eyes when she pulled herself away from the desk and walked towards the door. And there was something in the way she walked, a new sway in her hips that hadn't been there before, that drew his eyes directly to her waist. When he looked back up, there was a full on smirk on her lips. "That's not the way I hear it," she murmured in a husky tone when she reached him, one of her hand reaching up to slide a single finger down his mandible. "I've caught you doing an awful lot of looking at my waist, Vakarian. Almost like you can't wait to get your hands on it. Again."

He had nothing to say to that, really, even as he took another step towards the elevator. She seemed to sense his lack of reply as she let him go, taking a few steps back into the cabin. "And if you know anything about ships weapons, can you have a look at the main cannon when you have a minute?" The quick change in subject from the erotic to ship business tangled his tongue for a heartbeat. "It hasn't been calibrated since I stole her from Cerberus."

"Riiiight," he drawled with one last look at her, and added just before the doors closed between them, "Because I'm in a great place to optimize firing algorithms right now."

* * *

 _Okay, what the actual fuck, Jane?_

She had been all over him! She sat hard at her desk once the doors had closed, pressing her hands over her eyes as she tried to work through what had just happened. The first kiss and hug she understood had been relief at just having someone trust her, and both had been friendly if a little needy on her part. It had felt good, to find an equal who was willing to take her side and more, actually help her rather than coming up with some bullshit excuse. And that was fine. But after he had made it clear that he was actually going to stay and fight beside her?

It bore repeating: She had been all over him!

Trying to reply the events in her mind was not helping her understand why she had felt the sudden compulsion to drool all over him. It was making her hot again, though, which she couldn't even wrap her mind around. She was not attracted to aliens. She never had been attracted to aliens. And short of a Vorcha or a Krogan, before now she would have put Turians very near the top of her 'Would never sleep with in a million years' list.

Not that the list seemed to matter. She'd had her tongue in his mouth, and enjoyed the hell out of it. She'd had her hands all over him, and was only sorry that there had not been more of him to molest. Hell, she had been seconds away from desperately trying to rip off his armor, a feeling that had only heightened when he had started to put his hands on her too, and kiss her back, and rumble in a sound that wasn't quite a growl. And, _oh_ the way he had vibrated when he did actually growl at Joker's interruption.

Not. Helping.

She tried to think of other Turians she had met, tried to imagine doing what she had done with Vakarian. She even managed to focus on it for a moment, bring the image of one Turian to mind and hold it there. There had been a bartender on Omega… Dark plates, white markings on his face, grey eyes. Would he be considered attractive? What if he put his hands on her? What if she kissed him, and let him slide his tongue into her mouth and…

"Ew," she groaned into the empty room as the image was quickly banished any semblance of desire that had still burned in her gut. It was actually a relief, she found. "Alright, so I don't have a xeno fetish that I've managed to keep hidden even from myself for all these years."

 _And I'm talking to myself. Fuck you, Vakarian. This is your fault,_ she silently accused the absent Turian. _That confident way you take in everything around you with those intense blue eyes. That just the right amount of swagger in your walk. The way you look at me, like you're trying to figure out what makes me tick. And your voice... Oh damn, a girl could get off just listening to you… Dammit Jane!_

She snatched her hand away from her crotch, where it had wandered to rub rhythmically against her slit through her pants as she'd thought about the Spectre. She groaned as she tilted her head back to close her eyes and took a few deep breaths. The desire that had died when she'd thought of one Turian had snuck up on her and bit her like a snake the second she had started to think about the rugged, deadly, and obviously intelligent alien. It stunned her, how massive the contrast was between Vakarian and another Turian. Sure, she could easily be attracted to one human and not another of equal attractiveness based on various factors. But generally in that scenario she didn't feel like she was in heat looking at one while feeling like she needed a shower with the other.

A shower! That was a good idea. Clear her head, find the quiet place, make sure the water was ice cold. She lowered her head again, and paused when she noticed that she had a message on her private terminal. When she decided that a little distraction couldn't hurt, she leaned over the desk to see what she had.

 _Commander Shepard,_

 _I hope you find these helpful. With all that is going on, with the Collectors and the uncertain future of our mission, tension is normal. Sexual activity normal stress release for humans and Turians. Still, recommend cation. Must warn of chafing (see Turian/Human sexuality: A guide to Harmonious Interspecies Relationships.) Also, human ingestion of tissue could provoke allergic reaction. Anaphylactic shock possible(See Pamphlet: Is your dextro-amino lover going to kill you?) So don't… Ingest._

 _Enjoy yourself while possible, Shepard. Will be here studying cell reproduction. Much simpler. Less alcohol and mood music required._

 _Mordin Solus_

 _Attachment: Turian Reproductive Physiology: Holographic Edition_

 _Attachment: Turian/Human sexuality: A Video Guide to Harmonious Interspecies Relationships_

 _Attachment: Pamphlet: Is your dextro-amino lover going to kill you?_

She stared at the message for a full two minutes with her mouth hanging open in shock. Then, an uncontrollable bubble of laughter rippled up her throat. The bubble popped and she found herself clutching her stomach as the laughter rolled out of her in slightly hysteric, mostly hilarious waves. It was almost painful, but continued, and started up again when she read the part about 'ingesting' for the fifth time. It was the funniest thing she had ever seen!

"Oh god, ow, ow," she finally groaned when the laughter caused her to cramp a bit, a tear of mirth trickling down her cheek. Stifling any further laughter, she reached out to turn off her terminal and found her hand hovering rather than acting. She held it there for a beat, before she swallowed and clicked to open _Turian Reproductive Physiology: Holographic Edition._ The 'material', as she decided to think of it, didn't beat around the bush. The first few images were of naked Turians, both male and female. And again, not so much a tickle at the site of the broad chest, thin waist, long limbs and abundance of plates. She was instantly fascinated, though. There was no outward sign of sexual organs, and aside from the slightly smaller size, more angular facial features, and lighter build there was not really much difference between the males and the females.

"Hm… So where is the…" She clicked to the next page, which was a close up of a Turian male's crotch. A silver plated Turian male. Seeing an icon to play an animation, she bit her lip, clicked, and was treated to a show of how exactly a Turian cock came out of the aperture between shifted plates.

 _Sweet Feathery Christ! It's_ blue!

Green eyes wide, she almost followed the compulsion to close the damned terminal again before she found herself sitting still and just… Staring. The shape appeared to be compatible, and thankfully there were no plates on any of it. And the plates were silver, which allowed her to take a moment to fantasize that the male on the screen was Spectre Vakarian.

 _Dammit, dammit why did I have to do that?_ she groaned inwardly as she found herself rubbing her thighs together. What did it feel like? Was it warm or cool, smooth or rough? Did it throb like a humans? Why did it look a little damp?

"EDI, where is Spectre Vakarian?" she heard herself asking, even as she shifted in her seat, lifted her hips, and pulled her pants down just past her hips.

"Spectre Vakarian is in the cargo bay with his ship, Commander," came the feminine voice of the ships unshackled AI. "Would you like me to request his presence in your quarters?"

"No!" she groaned, settling down in the chair with her hand sliding over the flat of her belly slowly. She felt like a damned teenager about to get herself off to dirty thoughts of her boyfriend. Grinning a bit at that, she continued. "Just let me know if he moves at all. And lock my door. No messages unless the ship is about to explode."

"Very well. Logging you out, Shepard."

She tried to believe that it was just her imagination that had her hearing humor in the AI's voice, but quickly dismissed that as she slipped her hand between her thighs. She was already wet, already needy.

 _You're going to pay for this, Vakarian,_ she promised, and with blue eyes and a sexy voice in her mind, she attached the Turian cock on the screen to the one Turian that actually turned her on. She only lasted about thirty seconds.


	3. Painting the Town Green

Garrus stood beside the bunk on his ship on legs that were a little weak, still panting lightly as he snapped the codpiece of his armor back into place. If there had been any question about his attraction to Shepard before, there certainly wasn't one now. Getting himself off hadn't been that easy since he had been a young cadet with his first real female under him. And his fantasies had not even been very detailed, mostly due to the fact that he didn't know nearly enough about human physiology. But remembered sensations of her nails scratching along his fringe, and the taste of her tongue against his as she moaned had been just what he had needed.

He had no illusions that he was suddenly a lover of all things soft and fleshy. Even the thought of the blue skinned Asari maidens that were so popular with Turians had never really caught his attention. He had never considered cross-species intercourse before. _Damn, thinking of it that way doesn't help. Now I feel dirty and clinical._

At least he felt more focused now, with the cloud of lust taken care of so he could focus on what needed to be done on Omega. Shepard would need Archangel, but first the vigilante would need to cut ties with his squad for the foreseeable future. Something that Garrus knew could not be done until certain matters were settled first. Most notably the Merc companies that were currently hunting the man who had been a thorn in their side, and the squad that had helped him screw up the smooth criminal operations on Omega over the past two years.

Knowing that they were not far out from Omega now, he retrieved his Widow, his duel Phalanx handguns (specially made with the old heat dispersal system that did not require heat sinks to function) medigel, and a stock of disk grenades of various flavors. He also retrieved his visor, which had been running a major software update for most of the day. Sliding it into place over his eyes and adjusting it to allow it to lock into place against the back of his head, he was pleased when the HUD flared to life and started scrolling start-up diagnostics in holographic blue. He had felt just a little naked with it.

When he stepped off of his ship, she was waiting for him. Leaning against a white and black storage crate just at the end of his ship's ramp, watching him with an intensity that made mandibles flex against his jaw. He managed not to stop, though he didn't quiet pull off the pretense of not staring at her as he came to a stop a few feet away. Her green eyes were bright as she looked him over, a look of consideration on her face. She had not changed into her armor yet, which was distracting him to say the least. The alluring scent of her remained, and was a bit stronger perhaps. Strong enough to make him want to breathe deeper just to enjoy it. He did manage to keep his breathing even, however, and his stance casual if not a bit more intimidating and straight-backed now that he was fully armed and more in his element. "Shepard."

When she didn't reply and simply continued to stare at him, he realized that her eyes were on his visor. She was making quite a study of it, too, with her head tilting slightly from side to side as she stepped to one side of him, and then the other to see it from all angles. He stood still during her scrutiny, silently wondering why she was so interested in it… And why her scent definitely stronger now.

She finally seemed to decide something, and stopped her examination when she stood in front of him. A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. "I like it," she told him, green eyes sparkling slightly with amusement. "It makes you looked very… Dangerous. Mysterious, even. I bet bad guys go crazy wondering what you're seeing through that thing."

He let out a short laugh, a quick sound that caused his mandibles to flare wide. "My visor is the least of their worries, Shepard," he said as he reached back to pat his Widow with one hand. "I carry a very large gun."

He had honestly intended nothing at all sexual in the comment, but looking at the somehow knowing grin that came over her face made him feel a little… Uneasy. It didn't help that she stepped closer to him, the same hypnotic swing in her hips that made her waist shift delightfully under her clothes. "I can see that," was her breathy reply, her soft hand reaching up to brush against his mandible lightly.

It only took him one breath to realize exactly why her scent was affecting him so strongly. His eyes darted to her hand and instinct had him taking another, deeper breath through his nose to draw in the enticing aroma. It was different, but far from unpleasant; and because he recognized it easily now, his body was learning how to react to it.

When his gaze turned to her again, she was watching him with the same curious look on her face that meant she was trying to read him. Trying to figure out what he was thinking, or in this case why he was scenting the air. He turned his mouth into her hand as he pinned her with his gaze, and he had the pleasure of seeing her eyes go wide. She had apparently just realized that he _knew_ what she had been doing. Breathing hotly against her palm once, he snaked his tongue out and slid it from the center of her palm to the tip of her index finger slowly. The taste had not lingered; she had obviously cleaned up afterwards, but even lacking that it was a pure delight to watch her eyes cloud and feel her hand tremble against his mouth for a moment when his tongue curled over the tip of her fingers before he drew it back.

"Commander," he said giving her hand another nuzzle, tuning his voice a few octaves lower than it needed to be and watching her bite her lower lip for a moment at the sound, or maybe the feel of the vibrations against her skin. He was really starting to enjoy the effect his voice had on her. "You should get your gear. We'll be docked in a few minutes."

"Hm?" She suddenly seemed to become aware of the fact that they were standing in the middle of the cargo bay, and that her hand was nestled over his mouth and nose. Eyes popping wide, she snatched her hand way from his face and quicker than he could follow snapped it behind her back as if taking it from his line of sight _now_ would change what had just happened. "Right! Omega. Archangel. I'll go get my gear."

And she was off towards the armory, her stride as steady and sure as her voice had been weak a moment before. His mandible twitched once, impressed and a little disconcerted by how quickly she could go from being a woman being overrun by lust, to a commander who was all business. It was like she had a button in her mind, and she just needed to press it to forget everything but their mission. It was a handy skill, even if it was a little annoying; a man couldn't help but feel just a little clip to the pride as she vanished through the door without a backward glance.

* * *

Once upon a time, she had not really known much about Omega other than the fact that it existed, and she could have cared less about what went on there. Now, she really, really fucking hated Omega. During her fruitless search for Archangel the last time she had been here, she had seen people manipulated by a self-proclaimed priest, seen others enslaved by debt bullshit debt, had stepped around bodies lying in the trash like so much garbage, had been insulted, threatened, poisoned (at least she had given the bastard a taste of his own medicine, literally) and thrown out of a window at one point.

And not one person seemed to care about any of it. They milled around in three major categories in her mind: those just struggling to stay alive, those who preyed on the ones trying to survive, and those who controlled it all while sitting back and doing nothing to help anyone. Not without a price, anyway. It was beyond wretched. She was no angel; no one who had met her would ever call her some kind of paragon who did her best to make peace with everyone. She tended to stomp on her enemies, and keep stomping until they stopped moving. But she had her morals. She did her best to stand up for what was right, but keeping her eye on the big picture sometimes made it impossible to be all nice and fuzzy when dealing with… Well… Everyone. That was why she punched news reported, had told the Council to go fuck themselves (seemed like a good idea at the time) and had unshackled a damned AI. Because sometimes she reached the point where she had just had enough, and needed to blow off a little steam.

But Omega was not like that. Omega was vile. It was a society where the strong not only ruled over the weak, but abused them with impunity, with a total lack of consequences, and once done cast them aside like yesterday's garbage. Often literally. It was this untouchable boil in space where justice had never been able to find a foothold.

Until Archangel had come, and given the people hope.

And that was why she had been so crestfallen when she had been unable to find him. She wanted someone with that sense of… Right. That unquestionable moral fiber than had made him a legend among the innocents trapped here, and the skill that had made him the terror of everyone else. If only he hadn't been such a damned ghost, she could have at least met the man and shaken his hand even if he had refused to join her in the end.

But now, she stepped onto Omega with a Spectre at her side. A heavily armed Spectre who said he knew how to find Archangel, and moved with the confidence of someone who knew exactly what he was doing as they exited the docks. Confidence that she found very, very sexy.

She _hated_ Omega. But she hated it a lot less with someone she was starting to feel she could trust at her back.

"So where to, Vakarian?" she asked, turning to follow him when he immediately started towards the rental vehicles to the left of the docks.

"We're heading into the Kima District, where Archangel keeps on of his long term hideouts," he said, and paused when his omni-tool beeped. He stopped, and apparently deciding that the message was important enough to open, he muttered, "Just a minute, Shepard. I need to…"

She noticed the moment something changed. The straight backed, confident stance of the male suddenly went lax next to her. She looked up and him, and was immediately struck by the slack state of his mandibles. They hung so limply next to his face that it almost looked like they had been dislocated from his jaw. And his eyes… Those blues that were sharp, quick, and predatory were just cold and distance now. She felt a chill run down her spine when he slowly reached up with a trembling and snapped closed the orange display.

She stepped closer to him cautiously, reaching up to lay a hand on his armored should, "Vakarian? What is it?"

He flinched away from her touch, jerked back really, causing her worry to deepen as he stepped away from her. "Something has come up, Shepard." His voice was cold now, and he refused to meet her gaze as he summoned a car. Even when she had been trying to kill him herself, his tone had simply been sharp and professional. Now it was just… Empty, as if a wall had slammed up around every emotion inside him. "I have to deal with it. Your help isn't necessary."

If he had rounded on her and slammed his fist into her gut she would have felt less like a kicked puppy. And that just pissed her right the fuck off. When the car door opened and he moved towards it with the obvious intention of leaving her behind, she stormed over and blocked his path to the car. "Vakarian, you're not…"

That was as far as she got, before she found the front of her armor gripped, her body lifted as though she were a doll, and then felt the world tip as she was quickly slammed into the hood of the car. The eyes she looked into now were the purest color of _rage_ she had ever seen. An ocean surface during a hurricane was as smooth as glass compared to the primal fury of the blues that pinned her as surely as the hands that held her. "You are _not_ going to stop me!" he snarled furiously. "I am going to kill every last one of them, and I am going to make Garm drown in the blood of his own _grrrdikan_ vorcha!"

She was very distantly aware of the fact that he had just spowken Turian curse so foul that it had been omitted from the translator. She knew this kind of anger. She knew that responding with her own would only make matters worse, and would likely lead to violence between them. She really, really didn't want there to be violence between them. At least not outside of the bedroom. So she did something that she so rarely did, she almost didn't know where to start. She tried to calm him. While he growled, she slipped one of her gloves off quickly and reached up to place it lightly against the side of his face. The way he looked at as it approached made her believe for a heartbeat that he would actually try to bite her, but he remained still as her fingers traced the underside of his mandible lightly.

"Garrus," she began, using his given name and keeping her voice as gentle as possible. "I don't know what's going on, but I know that I need you in one piece. You're the only one who believes me, you're the only one who can help me. You need to calm down and listen."

He seemed more inclined to heave her up and over the railing that lead to the depths of the mines of Omega, and his growl deepened until she passed her fingers over his lips lightly. She saw him breath in deeply, and release. Breath in deeply, and release. The rage never left his eyes, but there was something else in them now as well. Something just as basic, just as primal. Just as dangerous. _He can still smell me on this hand,_ she realized, watching him closely as she used that by tracing her index finger over his mouth slowly. His chest rumbled, and it was a second or two before she felt the heat of his tongue slide over the finger slowly. _Now or never._

"I am not going to try to stop you, but I am not going to let you run off halfcocked and get yourself killed," she said, pressing her fingers to his mouth firmly when he opened then to snarl at her again. "I am going with you, and you're just going to have to accept that. Or we could start kicking each other's asses all over Omega. I'm not sure Aria would appreciate that."

She realized that he was watching her like a predator, which was exactly what Turians were at the base of their biological design. Assessing her silently, before his tongue darted over the palm of her hand again once, before he leaned close. For a moment, she froze and half expecting him to attack; he didn't look any less furious than he had a moment before. She was a blink away from struggling to escape before she felt him press his plated brow to her smooth one lightly. And then he just stayed there for a few breaths, long enough for her to consider that he must have been calming himself. Deciding to see if she could help him along, her hand brushed lightly back across his mandible until she found the bare hide at the back of his neck. She stroked him there, and prayed that she was actually doing something soothing. The low rumble rose in his chest seemed to confirm it, the tone softer and resounding through his body rather than being heard. Green eyes slid closed as she traced her fingers along his spinal plates, exploring and committing every ridge to memory.

"You're not leaving me behind, Vakarian," she whispered, her eyes drifting opened as her face grew determined. Predatory blues were opened again, and watching her. The heat of rage still burned inside of them, but it had cooled a little. Cooled enough for her to see a miserable pain behind it. "I don't know what you're planning, but if you're going after the Blood Pack, then you are going to need me at your back, just like I need you at mine against the Collectors. You are _stuck with me._ "

She wasn't sure what exactly cross over his face in that moment. She was lousy at reading Turians generally. The stronger emotions were obvious, and recently she had learned what a Turian looked like when they were aroused. But this one, this one came as he rubbed his forehead against hers lightly for a moment before he drew himself away from her and pulled her off of the hood of the car, and somehow it made her feel a little lost when his hands left her.

"I'm sorry, Shepard," he said, the flanging notes of his voice a little more pronounced. "You're right. I appreciate the help."

She wasn't put off by his clipped apology, or his quick but not entirely grateful acceptance of her help. She had no clue what was going on, but she knew that she had somehow managed to calm him. Well… Her scent had managed to calm him, which was something she decided to tuck away for later research. Turian reaction to scent. There had to be a book somewhere, right? Mordin would know.

 _Calming an enraged Turian with the smell of my pussy. I've stepped into a universe far stranger and sexier than my own,_ she decided as he climbed into the driver's side of the car and waited for her to join him. _Too bad there are still Reapers here._ She bit her lip to keep the bubble of sudden hysterical laughter from coming out and climbed in beside him without a word.

* * *

She immediately knew where they were going. The Kima District, a residential section of Omega. Her search for Archangel had led her there, when rumors and innuendo hinted that he might have a base there. She had even managed to find the base, a three story apartment that had granted superior line of sight to the bridge that was the only entrance by foot that she could see. But from the dusty state of the neatly stashed state of the heat sinks, field rations, and medical supplies she had found, it looked as though neither Archangel or his squad had spent much time there recently.

She kept her silence as they moved, even though her eyes kept shifting in his direction. Trying and failing to get a read on him. He was obviously still furious; she was sure that the grip he had on the steering wheel was going to cause it to snap, or that he was simply going to rip it out and throw it in the back seat in a rage. Instead, after a few minutes of silence, he started to talk.

"Three Mercenary groups have been hunting Archangel since his appearance six months ago," he said, almost making her jump with the sudden sound of his voice. "Because of the nature of Omega, it was only smart not to have a central base of operations, and he rarely met with his squad face-to-face. In fact, the only time all of them were in one place was right before they would strike. They all lived in different parts of Omega, were different species, different talents. They never spoke outside of operations. In effect, it was impossible for the Mercs to get a lead on any of them, much less Archangel himself. It was a very efficient and effective way to keep them all safe from retribution."

Shepard listened in silence, and though she kept her thoughts to herself, she again thought that Archangel would make an excellent member of her team. The planning was obviously next level tactical thinking, and also showed that Archangel cares for the people who followed him. And for it to only have taken six months for the Merc companies to treat him as a real threat was no small accomplishment, one earned with precise strikes that had slowly been crippling their operations.

"Two days ago…" He paused, and she could actually hear the sharp grind of his deadly teeth sliding over each other, and the clacking of his mandible as he fought for control. "Two days ago, they picked up a friend of mine, Lantar Sidonis, when they found out that he was Archangel's second in command." This time, she was positive that she heard something under his hands crack, and resisted the urge to reach out to try to sooth him. She wouldn't want to be soothed. There were some things that could not be eased away. "They ripped out his plates, _all of his plates,_ and kept him alive while they did it. When they were finished and there was nothing left of him to torture, they shot him in the back of the head and dumped his body in one of Archangels hideouts. He wouldn't have been able to tell them anything, of course. Even if they had broken him, he wouldn't have been able to tell them where the rest of the team was, or where Archangel was. So he was tortured, and died for nothing. _For nothing!"_ he snarled, and lacking anything in the vehicle to lash out at without causing them to crash, he simply glowered out the window, trembling with fury.

She felt sick as he spoke. She was pretty sure that ripping out a Turian's plates was somewhere between skinning them alive and tearing out bones at the same time. The suffering must have been horrific. "Who told you all of this?" she heard herself asking.

He barked a laugh that dripped with so much hate that the acidic nature of the sound should have burned her. "Garm. He's broadcasting it all over Omega, daring Archangel to come out of hiding to face them. They won't be expecting me."

Shepard frowned, and switched on her omni-tool to search through the Omega broadcasts until she found one with the title 'A massage for Archangel.' She hesitated for a moment, before she opened the broadcast. She kept the sound muted as the tiny hologram flared to life. She could actually feel her skin go white at the image before her; one of a massive Krogan in red armor standing next to a medical table. What was left of the Turian on the table looked to be in shock, and was likely not aware of what was even happening to him anymore.

"Oh, god." She felt bile rise in her throat when Garm took a flat, hook shaped metal tool, almost gently slipped it under the only remaining plate on Sedonis' chest, and slowly pried it off with a rush of blue blood. She could only watch the silent scream of agony for a second before she closed the tool and set her mouth into a hard line. "Us."

"What?" he said, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. His attention had been elsewhere, obviously, and she wondered why bloody death he was planning for the leader of the Blood Pack.

"They won't be expecting _us,_ " she repeated, feeling the calm spread over her that she always felt before going into a battle.

She saw a twitch of his mandible, and again found herself unable to read his face as he gave her a short nod. "Us." His focus returned to the road as they came closer to the Kima District. "The bastard even included coordinates for where they would be waiting for…"

He stopped speaking so suddenly that Shepard was instantly alert, sitting up in her seat to look outside of the car for what might have caused the sudden silence. She saw it. Just beyond the arrival platform for Kima a squad of LOKI mechs, and a red Salarian in white armor tapping away at his omni-tool and looking agitated. From her short meeting with him the last time she had been here, she thought he likely always looked agitated.

Jaroth, leader of the Eclipse on Omega. Likely checking their firing parameters, weapons statistics, whatever…

"Are you strapped in?" he said, interrupting her thoughts. She could see his hands tightening on the wheel again.

It only took her a second to realize that he intended to do. Her amp whirled, and her barrier flared to life around her before she gave him a confirming nod. "Do it."

She had been in crashes before. Shuttles, the Mako tank multiple times, even an Alliance cruiser once in her younger days as a soldier. She'd even had a Reaper fall on her head. She never really remembered the details of the exact moment of impact. Just the noise, sensation of sickening weightlessness, and a feeling of being out of control and not being able to think anything more than 'Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit' until eventually came to a stop. This time, she remembered everything. From the stomach turning speed Garrus suddenly poured on, to the look in the eyes of an unprepared Salarian through the windshield an instant before the car plowed through him and half a dozen of his mechs. She also remembered seeing him rag doll against the hood of the car, get pinned against it as their forward momentum carried them further into the district away from the remaining mechs, and the blunt for of impact that tore her barriers down when the car came to a very sudden stop against what must have been a very sturdy pillar in the middle of the corridor.

Groaning a bit at the aches that were already flaring to life all over her body, she managed to pull herself out of the wreckage only a second or two behind the Spectre, emerging into a world filled with the acrid stunk of smoke and the stale scent of poorly recycled air. Resting her hand on her head to clear it, she rounded the car and was a little shocked to find Jaroth still alive. The lower half of his body was crushed between the car and the wall, there was a great deal of green blood pooling on the ground below, but he was alive and lucid. He might not have been if he had not been wearing the heavy armor. She watched as Vakarian stormed over to him, and Jaroth's eyes widened for a moment, which is exactly the reaction she would expect when the thick barrel of the Widow was placed against his temple.

"Wait!" he croaked weakly, his eyes wild as he struggle pointless against his own pinned lower half. "I didn't have anything to do with…!"

She had never seen someone shot at close range with a Widow before. She had seen plenty taken out at range; had seen the weapon take down shields and armor with equal efficiency, and leave a nice fist sized hold in the back of some poor Asasi's head once. When she watched the Spectre pull the trigger, the throaty roar of the rifle and the violence of the kill seemed to match the mood perfectly. In mid word, the Salarian's head was simply gone in an almost pretty mist that painted the walls green where his head had been; a death so sudden that his heart beat a few more times, thick showers of blood coating the crushed hood of the car before slowing and finally coming to a stop as she and Vakarian watched in stony silence.

"It came from over here! Where the hell is that payjak Jaroth?!"

The sound of heavy footfalls mingled with many lighter ones made them both turn towards the entrance to the district. Rushing through the stairs was a group of hideously lanky vorcha, moving in a surprisingly organized formation. And at the center of the formation came Battlemaster Garm, the massive Krogan moving at a steady, loping pace. She knew from experience with Krogan that he could and would move much, much faster when the battle began. Watching him come closer, she felt a sick sinking in her gut when she saw what he wore on the front of his blood red armor like a trophy.

The facial plates and mandibles of a Turian, hanging like some horrible mask that swayed side to aside as he moved. It was still fresh enough that she could see the smears of blue blood.

She felt as much as heard the sound of agonized rage rumble beside her a moment before she saw Garrus start to move. On reflex, she reached out to grab his arm with an iron grip with one gloved hand. His head snapped, and he looked ready to snarl at her again. Maybe even looked a little tempted in that moment to send her after Jaroth, but her face was cool and calm as she spoke.

"I'll handle the vorcha. You focus on Garm," she said, and saw the understanding sink in past his rage. Giving a quick nod, he tried to pull away but she kept her grip firm as she unclipped her shotgun from her back and starred into his eyes. " _Focus_ , Spectre. You charge in, and you're as dead as Jaroth. You will have done nothing but give that bastard bragging rights."

The sharpness of her tone, the note of command she put forward best when she was about to enter combat seemed to snap against his present state of mind. His eyes became clearer, though the rage was hardly dulled by the fact that he seemed to hear her loud and clear.

"Who the hell are you?" she heard Garm grumble from a spot much closer than he had been before. She glanced over, to see the Krogan frown as he looked between the two of them, and the dead Salarian. "Doesn't really matter who you are, you're in the wrong place…"

Whether or not Vakarian would actually care enough to obey was lost to her when a Krogan Battlemaster bellowed, and more than a dozen vorcha opened fire.


	4. Absolute Badass

Shepard picked the oddest times to think about certain things. One time when she was in basic, huffing and struggling her way through an obstacle course, she had been reminded of losing her virginity. While scaling a wall via rope (she never did understand that part. Who used fucking ropes anymore?) she had decided that the two experiences were not terribly dissimilar. She was sweating, she wasn't enjoying herself, her muscles ached, she was going to be in pain tomorrow morning, and there was a large frightening man yelling at her to get her ass moving. Minus the fear and the trauma, it was a perfect match in her mind's eye.

Back then, the thought had caused her to laugh so hard that she had fallen off of the wall before reaching the top. As the top recruit, everyone had been shocked, but she had quickly recovered and managed to cross the finish line first, laughing all the way.

Good times.

Now from the temporary protection of the small sliver of cover she had managed to find behind a short wall, she found herself thinking about eating shellfish. Crab, to be specific. Her stomach positively growled at the idea of some nice, steamed to perfection and dipped in butter crab claws. It wasn't exactly something she _wanted_ to be thinking about as she popped out of cover and sprayed a vorcha with sub-machine gun fire as she waited for her amp to cool, but… There it was. She wanted some crab. Somehow, after watching some poor fucking Turian be torn out of his plates, she wanted _shellfish._

There was obviously something wrong with her, because she was also pretty sure that the second she did get her hands on some crab, the memories of that holo would rob her of her appetite. She wondered if there was a name for a mental condition that allowed to think morbid thoughts, but still allowed her to be disgusted with herself.

While she mentally tracked where she had seen the last few vorcha take cover, she also tracked the sound of a roaring Krogan and the repeated and steady _thucccoom_ of the Widow rifle. As long as she kept hearing those sounds, she could focus on the vorcha. The fact that the battle between the two had gone on as long as it had already told her that she had gotten through to him. From the size of Garm, the speed that she had seen him pour on when he had first charged into battle, and the fact that he carried a shotgun with as much stopping power as the Widow, she was certain that Vakarian was keeping his distance and picking his shots. She was a little confused as to why the Krogan wasn't dead yet. She had heard rumors that Garm regenerated more quickly than your average Krogan, but it couldn't have been making _this_ much of a difference.

Her worries were interrupted when she heard shuffling to her left, and spotted a pair of red clad vorcha moving to her flank. Not one to panic, she stood still rather than try to move to deeper cover. Two second. Two… One… She felt the little whir and rush of energy as her amp fully recharged, and grinned with the pleasant buzz of battle fury as the bullets started to plink against her barriers again. Drawing her shotgun, she ramped up the biotics as she turned to face them and saw the world narrow to a tunnel of blue lightening before she was gone.

Even after so many years, there was still a very small delay between the moment her body became a biotic detonation waiting to happen and the moment she was able to bring her shotgun to bear. Butas adaptable as their bodies were, vorcha were really terrible at adapting to being surprised. They were also terrible at taking cover, so even as the merc she hit went flying across the room with a shriek of shocked pain, the blast from her shotgun wiped she look of stunned surprise from the face of the other. And took the rest of the head with it. Feeling a little tickle as her amp charged again, she dashed over to the weakly rising survivor, and put an end to her survival with a second bark from her gun before she popped the heat sink.

Eyes turning to what remained of the vorcha, she slid in another sink… And paused, when she saw another group of six mercs turning the corner, running full tilt towards the battle. Three of the slender, quick vorcha, two Krogan, and one thickly built vorcha with a tank strapped to his back and a tube of fire leading him. Dropping behind cover, she groaned silently to herself and rolled her eyes. Garm had finally gotten smart enough to call for backup, and she really didn't want to fight a Krogan. Charging them with biotics was often a hard lesson in 'It may or may not work the way you hope, because Krogan are fucking heavy.' Add a flamer unit to the mix and she was in for a tough one. Still, it was either engage them, or let them go off after Vakarian. Starting the build in her amp, she swung around the corner…

 _Thucccoom!_

Her amp went silent when she watched the hideously toothy face of one vorcha vanish, and the sudden mad, desperate sheiks of the one with the flamer tank on his back. A single heartbeat passed before the flames bloomed from the tank, hissing escaping gas in every direction as the vorcha tried to rip it off his back. Luckily, it seemed to take the rest of the unit a beat too long to realize that they were well and truly fucked. She didn't bother to get behind cover, and she was glad she didn't. When the tank went, it was like a work of art. The resulting explosion of liquid fire poured out over the mixed unit with such hunger and force that sent blood red armor and limbs flying in all directions at once.

 _Vakarian, you absolute badass. Now I feel all warm and fuzzy. Or horny._

The warm fuzzy feeling, because she did actually have one after watching the new mercs decimated in one perfectly placed shot, remained when she saw the two Krogan start to struggle to their feet. Still burning. Her amp buzzed almost before she had the conscious though to send the shockwave in their direction, but moments later the lovely thumping mini explosions slammed into both of the massive aliens. When a biotic pressure wave met fire, the effect as always impressive. The sudden change in air pressure, the vortex of energy, and the resulting rush of oxygen in the form of ozone all added quick burning fuel to the flames. Which in this case, resulted in a beautiful sphere of red and blue that blasted the mercs with more than enough force to end their already violent lives in an equally violent way.

She heard the skittering of feet again, and braced herself for another wave of attackers, but quickly realized that the footsteps were moving _away_ from their little battlefield. Having never seen a vorcha retreat, she was left a little shell-shocked for a moment. Then her world focused on one point above her.

She could see it very clearly when she raised her eyes at the sound of Garm's bellow of rage. The body of a Turian being slammed into the railing of the upper level walkway, torn away with a force that made his head snap against the cowl of his armor before he was slammed forward again by the body of the Krogan. Again and again, until a heartsick Shepard was sure she was watching the death of Garrus Vakarian. She heard his flanged snarl of pain, and the weakening grunts that followed before he was lifted from the ground like a rag doll, and was hurled over the side.

Somewhere, she was pretty sure that she screamed his name when she watched the limp body slide through the air and slam into the ground with a heavy thud. There was no cliché moment of slow motion where she saw every detail of his fall, giving her the time to feel helpless as she realized she couldn't do anything to stop it. It was over fast. So fast that she hardly had time to process what had happened before she saw the massive form of the Krogan Battlemaster climb onto the ledge, and jump down with surprising agility. The massive alien slammed into the ground next to where the fallen Turian lay unmoving, his eyes never leaving his opponent as he watched for signs of life.

Her mind started to move again when she watched Garm prod the motionless form with the barrel of his shotgun, before grunting slightly. Shepard wondered dully why he didn't simply pull the trigger, make sure the Spectre was dead. Then she saw that the red warning over overheating near the trigger, and realized that he was out of heatsinks and couldn't fire until the weapon cooled naturally. With a snort, and a firm kick to Garrus' side that gained not so much as a twitch, the Krogan turned his attention to her.

"I don't know how you got mixed up in this, Shepard," he rumbled with a snarl on his wide mouth, his voice sounding hoarse and ragged. Most likely because of more than a dozen fist sized holes that were clearly visible in his chest armor. "But this is what happens to those who mess with the Blood Pack. And you're not off the hook."

She wasn't a bleeding heart. She didn't break down in tears at the sight of her comrade, and once possible lover lying motionless on the ground. Instead, fury grew swiftly as her mouth twisted into a snarl of her own; her fingers tightening on her shotgun as she pushed her amp to the limit. She was going to tear this Krogan to…

Shepard and Garm both heard the happy humming sound at the same moment; the almost cheerful tone drawing their gazes down. Shepard positively gaped at the three fingered hands attaching the disk grenades to each of Garm's knees, and behind them the bloody face and still sharp blue eyes of Vakarian.

"You always did talk too much, Garm," he hissed, and with that he was rolling away from the howling Krogan quickly at the same moment that Shepard dove for cover. Garm only had time to reach down in a vain attempt to remove the disks before the explosion ripped his legs from his body, and sent him flying into the wall with enough force that she was sure all of Omega must have shook. And then there was silence.

When she came out of cover, the first thing that struck her was the thick scent of cooked flesh and blood that seemed to saturate the air around her. Not unfamiliar smells, unfortunately. The scorch marks left by the explosion formed a near perfect ring around what was pretty much a pulverized mess that had once been Battlemaster Garm's legs. She heard, before she saw, Vakarian drawing himself to his feet with a low grunt of effort. Then she watched with a tight jaw as he slowly limped over to the Widow he had been holding when he had been tossed off a ledge, leaned down with obvious effort to pick it up, and started towards the wall in a slow limp. He looked like shit. There was a line of blue blood visible on both corners of his mouth, one of his mandibles was twisted at an odd angle, his armor was burned and peppered with holes from glancing shotgun fire. He also looked very, very tired. She wondered why he was walking towards the wall, and decided he might need to lean against something. Starting towards him, she froze in place when she saw movement.

 _What the fuck? That Krogan is a freak of nature._

Garm struggles uselessly to pull himself into an upright position as Garrus walked towards him slowly. Despite her own lingering rage, Shepard stood still and watched with no small amount of admiration as the Spectre raised his rifle on his hip and fired.

 _Thucccoom!_

 _Thucccoom!_

 _Thucccoom!_

 _Thucccoom!_

Each shot from the Widow caused the Krogan to make all sorts of random, blood filled gurgling sounds. Half of them sounded like simple pain, but she knew that the rest were curses and attempts at threats. But he didn't stop moving. Trying desperately to survive even when he knew there was no chance to escape this fate. She knew the feeling.

Vakarian stopped firing only once he had blown sizable holes in both of the Krogan's shoulders, two in his hips, and one center mass in his gut. Shepard realized that he had not been shooting to kill; he was making sure Garm wouldn't be able to regenerate enough to become a threat. She heard a horrible gurgling rumble coming from the Krogan, and realized it was a humorless laugh.

"I should have known it was you," the dying Krogan managed to say, turning his head and spitting blood onto the ground near Garrus' feet. "I didn't recognize you out of that blue armor, and you usually wear that helmet… But… No one… Ngh!" His words were cut off when one armored boot stomped on the hand he had been using to quietly draw a pistol. Shepard heard bones break when the Spectre bore down full force before kicking the gun away and standing over his fallen enemy. "No one else was ever such a pain in my ass."

Shepard went very still, her eyes ticking between the two of them quickly as she hung on every word. One dying Krogan who moments before had been one of the most feared figures on the station, and one Turian who stared down at him with a face so expressionless it may well have been carved from ice.

"So you really think this will change anything?" Garm continued as Garrus folded down his rifle, and reached to his sides. He drew out another grenade, one which the Krogan watched like someone suddenly very aware of the means of his death. And like most Krogan, he didn't look at all afraid of it, even as another wet couch wracked his broken body. "When I'm gone, someone else will come to take my place. Another leader will rise in the Blood Pack, and it will be business as usual. All of your raids, and your squad's sabotage hardly made a dent in the long run. You might slow us down… But you haven't stopped _anything._ "

"That's the thing about objects in motion, Garm." The sudden sound of the Turian's voice cutting into her thoughts of ' _There is no fucking way…'_ actually made Shepard jump. Just a little. "If you slow them down enough, they inevitably stop moving."

His voice was as cold as the deadly look in his eyes might have suggested, but he still seemed calm as he leaned over Garm and grabbed his lower jaw to force his mouth open with a vicious yank. He pushed the grenade into the wide mouth of the Krogan, and only after reaching so deep that Shepard could hear Garm gagging as he was forced to swallow did the hand withdraw, empty now. Shepard felt just a little sick when she realized the Krogan had just been forced to swallow an active grenade.

With that, Garrus drew himself to his feet and started to walk away. The Krogan snarled in final defiance as he struggle to raise just enough to lash out, an attempt that fell short and left him lying motionless on his side, glaring death into the back of the gray armor.

"I'll see you in Hell, _Archangel!"_

Those were the last words Garm, leader of the Blood Pack on Omega, spoke before his torso erupted in a spray of blood, bone, organs and fire.

Shepard was frozen in place as he walked towards her. She wasn't even paying attention to the doomed merc leader in the moment of his violent death. But the sudden eruption of flames and gore soft of… Outlined Vakarian for a moment. This time, she did have one of those cliché moments; one that she had seen in the action romance vids she had been forced to watch by Tali on the SR1, where the hero of the story was sudden seen in a whole new light. In this case, the light was the orange flames and crimson rain of an exploding Krogan; and it sort of washed away her image of him as just a Spectre. She thought he looked like an otherworldly spirit of vengeance. An entity sent to hand out violent justice on behalf of people who had no other means to get it.

 _Of course,_ she thought numbly as he stopped a few feet away from her, looking exhausted but unbroken. _An Archangel. Who else could you possibly be?_

Being Commander Shepard, who was running around the galaxy looking for a way to stop an unstoppable fleet of genocidal machines that made most species ideas of religion seem pointless and short lived, she wasn't exactly standing in awe. She was shocked, impressed even. But she was also a little pissed off. And before she could stop herself, she had her fingers stuck in his face, stabbing it at him it as though it would force him to explain everything. Making irrational gestures in his direction was starting to be a habit with her.

"You! You… You…. Turian Ass! You're…!"

 _"Archangel!"_ came a voice that was clearly being broadcast through coms. She had enough time to think an annoyed _'I was getting to that'_ before she realized that the voice was coming from the heavily armed gunship that swung around the buildings to bear down on them.

As quickly as she might have reacted, there was a moment when she realized that she wasn't going to be fast enough as the gunship opened fire in a storm of bullets, most of which glanced off of her barrier and Vakarian's heavy armor. There was a tickle of in the back of her mind when she realized that Garrus' shields had never come back up, likely damaged in his fight. His body was jerked sharply every time his armor was hit, and it was impossible to miss the agonized sound that escaped him. She was a moment away from reaching out to pull him into her barriers when there was a pause in the assault. But the calm was false, and the voice raged again. "You think you can mess with the Blue Suns?!"

A soldier's instinct told her that the pause was an ordinance change only a second before heard the rocket preparing for launch. She was stunned when still strong hands grasp her shoulders, and before she could protest she was being shoved away from the one she had moments ago wanted to protect. "Get down," she screamed, even as she fell into cover. But even as he dove into a roll that would have landed him out of harm's way, the rocket found its intended target.

"Garrus!" His name was the only thing that she could manage as she watched the rocket strike, erupt, and fling the Turian across the ground with a sickening force that ended with him lying motionless on his side. This time, she knew he wasn't pretending. This time, as she stared in horror at the silent figure, she saw a pool of blue blood start to spread quickly and knew I her gut that he had to be dead.

She became dimly aware of the sound of the gunship still waiting for a chance to finish her off. She didn't even try to stop the wave of fury that rose to replace a sorrow that threatened to crush her; she had found someone who believed her, a man that she could trust, and who trusted her in turn. And just like always, he had been ripped away from her by a universe that seemed determined to fuck her over, again and again. She didn't bother to dodge the rain of weapon fire ripping across her barriers as she rose from cover with a red haze settling over her vision, her scream ripping through the air as she charged forward.

In retrospect, something that she found herself doing a lot after a particularly reckless action in battle, she knew it had been stupid. She hadn't used cover at all, hadn't bothered to maintain her barriers, and had rushed forward without a single thought of what that meant. One lucky shot and she would have been on the ground, just as dead as Garrus. But fury drove her to push her biotics well beyond the limits of her amp, and in less than a minute she watched with terrible pleasure as the burning wreck of the gunship spun out of control into the mines in the deeper levels of Omega.

But as the fury started to fade, and along with it the natural high of adrenalin and battle lust, she felt a weight of loss that she didn't know what to do with. She made her way quickly to where Vakarian lay in a pool of his own blood, stumbling a bit before she dropped to her knees beside him. She wasn't even sure what she intended to do. Cry over him? Rage at his corpse for getting himself killed? Maybe a little of both? She just knew that she was alone again, and that loneliness started to creep over her as surely as his blood crept across the ground.

The sudden, wet gasp for breath snapped her out of her self-pity. She couldn't believe what she was seeing when the Turian sucked in another breath, fingers trying uselessly to grip the barrel of the Widow at his side.

"Garrus!"

Alive. He was alive. She rolled him over to see his condition, but… Oh god, his face. There was so much blood, so much damage, she didn't even know where to begin as she started to pour every ounce of Medi-gel she had on the bleeding muscles and ragged, burned tissue. She stared in sick horror at the giant, gaping hole where the right side of his face had been, even as she steadied her voice to speak assurance to him.

"I'm getting you out of here Garrus, just hold on. Please," she added as she fought with her desire to pull him into her lap. She was afraid of what damage even that might have done. "Joker, emergency medical evac, _now!"_

* * *

One should never wake up in such blinding agony. It wasn't even really a conscious thought; more a simple feeling of bitter annoyance when the simple act of opening his eyes caused pain to flare through his entire face. Plates throbbed so intensely that he saw spots before his eyes; the muscles of his cheeks burned with such raw pain that he almost screamed; his mandible felt as though it was attached by a single threat of sinew, so much so that he dared not flex it to make sure it still worked. He struggled for a moment to move, but someone walk talking to him in a firmly comforting voice before he felt a needle slide into his neck. The side of his neck that didn't feel like a varren had been using it for a chew toy. There was even pain in his shoulder and chest, though before he could process the sensation a cool feeling spread through his system. Pain killers. He had never felt the need for them before, but he thanked the Spirits for them now as the agony was toned down to an extremely unpleasant throb over half of his body.

He didn't bother to open his eyes just yet. When the pain eased, he was able to focus. He was able to think, he was able to put himself through a mental checklist of what had led him to be… Wherever he was.

Omega. A message. Sidonis dead. Blinding fury. Jaroth. Garm. Both dead. Satisfaction in that. Tarak. Gunship. Fire. Pain. Shepard.

"Shepard!"

What should have been a clear call to the human commander came out as a weak rasp that was hardly recognizable as speech at all. He tried again, and tried to struggle upright only to have hands push him back gently. He found that he didn't have the strength to fight them just yet. He was in a bed, likely in a med-bay. Normandy? The smell was too clean for Omega, the air filtered and sterile. He risked opening his eyes, and squinted against the light that flared into them. The face looking down at him was human, female, but older.

But it wasn't Shepard.

Focus. Control. He took a deep breath that caused pain to flare in chest, but once released he took another. This time when he spoke, his voice came out as recognizable words even if the sound of his own voice was strange to him. "Where… Where is Shepard?"

Maybe he should have been concerned with where he was, and how he was doing; if he would recover, or if this bed was where he would spend his last few moments of life. But he could only think that he had left Shepard alone to face Tarak. The human leaning over him, Chakwas he remembered from his intel on the crew of this Normandy, replied to his question without stepping away from him. Smart. She was likely aware that he would just try to get out of the bed again.

"Shepard is fine, and is waiting outside. You've given us quite the scare, Spectre," she said, her omni-tool flashing to life on her arm as she checked his vitals. "And here I thought all of you were as tough as Shepard."

It was amusing, but the best he could manage was a light grunt before he tried to turn his head towards the door. Chakwas seemed to notice the motion, and closed her omni-tool as she leaned over him. "Would you like to see the Commander?"

Thoughts were coming more clearly now. He had been hit in the face with a rocket. He had actually felt the impact of the warhead against his mandible a split second before the explosion had turned his world into a swirl of pain before merciful black had taken him. At least temporarily. He managed to nod without screaming, but didn't both trying to speak again. The pain killers were taking a full hold now, and while he was fully lucid, even the throbbed had backed off a bit more. Cerberus had spared no expense with the medical supplied, clearly.

He followed the doctor with his eyes as she walked to the doors, flexing his hand silently as he did so. It only took him two attempts before he was able to open and close it with ease. Then he tried lifting his arm, turning his foot, being his leg, and finally flexing his trigger fingers. He released a slow breath of relief when he realized everything was working fine. So there was no obvious nerve damage beyond the side of his face, at least as far as he could tell. His turned his head with a wince when Shepard all but stepped on the doctor as soon as the door was opened. "Doctor, is he…?"

Their eyes met across the room, and held. He wasn't sure which of them was more relieved to see the other; but given the way Chakwas had to physically hold the Commander at arms length to keep her from moving directly to him… He was willing to harbor a guess. Of course he also couldn't help but notice the way her eyes moved to the side of his face, and a wince marred her features for a moment. _That bad, huh?_ He lay back then, and closed his eyes as he listened to the doctor explain things to Shepard.

"I've done what I can for him, Commander," she began in a low voice, obviously not fully aware of the fact that being across the room did not keep him from hearing her. Humans had such dull senses. "But the damage was extensive. I managed to repair the permanent damage with surgery, and adapting some of the cybernetics intended as replacement parts for your own. Once he is fully healed, he will regain full mobility and use of his faculties. However…"

There was a pause, a certain pause in the flow of the words that let him know that the next words were going to be the bad news. Shepard seemed to know the same thing, and with a tone that that was quick with impatience, she said "Spit it out, doc."

"He will have major scarring over almost twenty-five percent of his face and neck," the doctor continued, hushing her tone even further. "Without a proper Turian medical specialist, there is nothing I can do to diminish it. The only way I was able to save his mandible at all was to fuse it with cybernetic weave, so it will probably never feel quite right to him again. There was also some damage to his shoulder from the blast, but that at least will full heal with him. This is not even mentioning multiple broken ribs, a fractured leg, internal bleeding blunt force trauma, and the thirty minutes I spent removing shrapnel from small weapons fire. Frankly, it is amazing he lived long enough to make it onto my table."

He felt a little twinge at the talk of massive scarring on his face. He wasn't by any means a vain man, but he also had no illusions that it wouldn't affect him at all. Still, if there had been a price to pay for ending Garm for what he had done to Sidonis… It was a fair trade. Even if the disfigurement might turn her off of going any further with him.

When he opened his eyes again, he found that Shepard had not taken her off of him. She just stood there while the doctor continued, her back stiff, her face expressionless, her eyes unmoving. He wondered if she was struggling to keep that professional face in place, or if she was just that pissed off at him.

When the doctor finished the medical speak about light duty, no combat for at least a few days while the cybernetics healed, and pain killers, Shepard excused herself with a nod and made her way over to him. Even though the distance was short, he only needed to watch her take a few steps to know that she was storming towards him.

 _Angry then. I can handle that._

"Shepard," he began, using the returning strength of his arms in an attempt to sit up. "No one would give me a mirror. How bad is… Mmph!"

Finding himself pushed back onto the bed was no surprise; he probably didn't need to be moving around much anyway. Finding her mouth locked on his? That was just as surprising as it had been the first time. This time, though, he knew what to do with it. A little purr rose in his chest as she kept one hand pressed to his chest to keep him still, and another sliding down the mandible on the undamaged side of his face. He raised his own hand, and ignoring the twinge of pain from his ribs the motion cause, traced his talons down the side of her face as gently as he possibly could. But even though she released a small, pleased sound at the caress, he was thankful that she didn't deepen the kiss; he wasn't sure he could survive an erection in his current condition.

 _Maybe the scars won't be a problem, after all._

When her mouth left his, there was another tiny press of her soft lips to his mandible before she lowered herself into a chair beside the bed. When his eyes met hers, the low rumble in his chest died when he realized that she was glaring at him. He crossed his eyes a little to look at the fingers that was suddenly shoved in his face (she really liked doing that to him) before she spoke in a tone that was anything but affectionate.

"Glad you're feeling better. Archangel _."_

 _Damn._


End file.
